These deductions represent mainly material—cotton, and tools—machine needles. Some employers oblige their workers to pay hire for the sewing machines used in the factory, and where these machines are worked by steam, gas, or electricity, a charge varying from a halfpenny to sixpence “for power” is not unusual. I have known instances in which the rent of a factory has been partly—perhaps wholly—defrayed by a charge upon the workers, who had to pay so much a week for their places in it. “Cleaning, as well as rent, is sometimes met in the same way by a weekly charge of 2d. or 3d. for cleaning the workroom. I am assured that one ingenious employer pays a man 15s. a week for performing this duty in addition to others, while the payments made by the women amount to 30s. In a certain provincial town in a factory which I visited, there was no apparent method of lighting. I was informed that in the winter the women brought their own candles. A local competitor, more acute, provides gas, and charges each girl 3d. a week throughout the dark seasons, at which rate, according to his fellow townsmen, he must make a profit on his gas bill.”[17] In a large box factory deductions were made for glue, for gas to heat the glue, for string to tie the boxes together, and for work books—amounting in all to 1s. 6d. per week. A charge for hot water to make tea is not unusual, and is sometimes enforced on all workers, the resulting sum, where many are employed, being ridiculously in excess of the cost of the boiling water. One young woman known to me paid this tax (in her case 2d. a week) for six weeks, and never once used the hot water. Deductions for spoiled work or alleged damage are those which seem the most to arouse heartburnings and that general feeling of grudge which it is so greatly the interest of an employer to avoid arousing. Where, for instance, glass or earthenware jars are filled with boiling preserve, one or two jars in every few hundreds are sure to crack. “The breakage will probably come to light under the hands of the girl who washes the jar and sticks on the label, and in some factories she is made to pay.” I have known a girl charged the full selling price for a seven-pound jar from which the bits of glass were afterwards picked out and the preserve reboiled and sold. Many instances of a similar kind from other trades might be quoted if space allowed.